This book has been a real find for me! I think I must have read pretty much every book ever published (well, since 1999, anyway) about metabolic disorders, their causes and how to treat them. None of them told me anything I hadn't already worked out for myself about nutrition, the endocrine system, adrenal fatigue, hypothyroidism and the value of a healthy lifestyle.
However, my life is stress on a stick, has been for years and I can't change that at the moment so all the mellifluous theory spouted in those books didn't help me at all. I knew part of my trouble is a dysfunctional thyroid gland but I also knew through bitter experience that merely taking thyroxine and dieting isn't the answer to weight loss or feeling better than I have been.
This book addresses its readers with the assumption that we actually have some intelligence, rather than talking to us as we're half witted. Starting from a standpoint that assumes stress is a given in all our lives, it delves much more deeply than all the other books into the background causes of metabolic dysfunction, including the effect stress has on hidden cell activity, tipping the balance of testosterone and cortisol ratios in the blood until we're merely exhausted fat-making machines instead of the vital, busy, healthy people we used to be.
It also dismisses the theory so many books support - that we need to up our exercise regime to ridiculously unmanageable levels to lose weight; in most cases, if we had the time to do two hours of bench pressing or jogging each day, we probably wouldn't be in the state we're currently in. Interestingly, the author also describes how too much exercise-based stress can work against your health and well being.
What I gained from reading this book is an understanding of how my body has changed while I was busy looking the other way, and what I can do to get the balance of my health restored in my favour. It recommends taking a lot of supplements (standard vitamins and some easily available herbal concoctions) at doses that many health practitioners probably wouldn't approve of, but I'm prepared to give these theories a try for three months because they sound like they're based in common sense. And anyway, I've tried everything else.
I will leave another review after that time as an update...